Sontag Reading #2

BISMCS 343

Sontag Reading Discussion Questions #2

Please answer the following questions from On Photography, pages 85-180:

1. Sontag discusses the tendency of the camera and the photographer to have an affinity to capture beauty and aesthetics. In your opinion, what is the role of beauty or the beautiful image in the documentary image?

2. Do photographs, even ones of suffering, abject poverty, and atrocities ‘inexorably beautify’ (creates beauty under all circumstances)? Is this needed? Is this morally conscionable?

3. Sontag discusses the technology of photography moving fast (too fast) in 1977 and its impact on the art form. What are the implications for today?

4. In the last chapter, Sontag mentions German philosopher Feuerbach and his prescient observations in the 19th Century about the image world replacing the real one. Does this have any resonance today?